Quantum mechanics, the underlying microscopic theory of our
existence governing the behavior of the physical world, is the
crowning success of human intellect. It is astonishingly successful--
no experiment contradicts the predictions of the theory, and the
theory has been explicitly verified to be correct to a precision better than
1 part in a trillion. In the past 60 years, developments of quantum theory have
led to the modern technology that has revolutionized the world through
applications such as transistors, lasers, and magnetic discs. Despite this
great success we really do not understand the quantum theory in an intuitive
manner because quantum laws are so radically different from the
classical laws of physics. The dichotomy that the modern world is quantum,
but the precise meaning of the quantum remains elusive, disturbed
the stalwarts of physics such as Einstein, Schrodinger, and Feynman,
and continues to baffle physicists even today. This lecture will explore
this curious state of affairs, highlighting the numerous quantum based
ideas and applications which underpin our modern world and the sublime
strangeness of the theory which completely eludes our intuition.

Sankar Das Sarma is a Distinguished University Professor at the University
of Maryland. He is also a professor of physics, a Fellow of the Joint
Quantum Institute, and the director of the Condensed Matter Theory Center
at Maryland. Das Sarma received his PhD from Brown University in 1979,
and has been a faculty member at Maryland since 1980. His undergraduate
degree is from Presidency College in Calcutta (Kolkata), India where he
was born. Das Sarma is a frequent visitor to KITP, UCSB, having organized
many KITP programs. He is currently the Chair of the KITP Advisory Board.
Das Sarma's research interests are the quantum theory of matter, statistical
mechanics, and quantum information. His publications and expertise are
broad, ranging over topics as disparate as topological quantum computation,
fluctuations in financial markets, physics of high-speed transistors, and
exotic quantum properties of solids and atoms at ultra low temperatures and
in ultrahigh magnetic fields.